Merry Christmas from Baku! It's freezing!!

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Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Seasons greetings from chilly Baku. Sub-zero temperatures and a few flurries of snow certainly took us by surprise. Anyway, this blog is just to wrap up 2008 before we head back to the UK for our first British Christmas for a few years. Hope London is warmer when we get there!!!

Friday evenings seem to have become a regular night out. Happy Hour in the Phoenix Bar brings good company and cheap beer, usually followed by a nice meal somewhere. So, if you're ever in Baku on a Friday night, you know where to come!

Trish seems to have picked up a secret admirer! Outside LSD's city centre office someone (not Russ!) has drawn some graffiti. Sweet eh!!!!

Azerbaijan is a muslim country so we have been surprised by a few recent developments. Christmas trees, lights and even Santa are to be seen on the streets. A huge tree is being built but probably too late for us to see it. Apparently though they are not Christmas Trees, and neither is the fat guy in a red suit Father Christmas. No, over here they are "New Year" Trees and the jolly chappy is in fact "Father New Year"!

A month or so ago we went to the Indian community Diwali festival dinner. The photos from that night have finally appeared in Baku's "hi-society" magazine, In Baku and for some reason they decided to feature our picture. It's nothing special to be in the magazine though as there were about 100 photos from various events.

We finally made it to Baku's Opera Ballet Theatre. This is the home of the national opera and ballet companies and we went to see the Azeri opera Leyli and Macnun which was interesting to say the least. It featured some excellent operatic scenes, wonderful costumes, a beautiful story (Romeo and Juliette-esque but written hundreds of years before William Shakespeare was around!) and some wailing which is apparently the Azeri style of opera singing. It probably wasn't wailing but we were reminded of being woken up in the early morning by a muezzin's call to prayer at the mosque. Those bits were not to our taste but the music was wonderful.

So, now we head to the UK hoping it's going to be a bit warmer than here. 2008 has certainly been an interesting year: Bolivia - Brazil - UK - Syria - UK - Azerbaijan - UK again. What has 2009 got in store? Beyond October, who knows, but until then there will be more tales of Azerbaijan plus a few weeks in Georgia and Turkey. We are hoping visit Uzbekistan in March and Russ is desperate to go to Tehran, Iran, while we are so close. The question is, is Trish prepared to cover up for the weekend and go too?!!!!

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Photos

Graffiti
Looks like Trish has a fan!

Celik
He's a Turkish pop star!

Comments

[barrygahan]

Brrr, it's cold here too!
Hope you guys are having a good holiday here in Britain, though it's probably as cold as in Azerbaijan.